Counterfactual Korea: War or Peace had USFK left?

The value lies not in prediction, but in forcing us to see that the current order is neither natural nor permanent — and that futures start with the decisions made today.

Speculative and counterfactual political writing are easily dismissed as fantasy, yet they perform an essential intellectual function: they loosen the grip of the present. By imagining worlds where wars unfold differently, alliances dissipate, or empires decline earlier than expected, speculative thinking exposes hidden assumptions embedded within contemporary analysis and open minds to alternative paths.

The value lies not in prediction, but in forcing us to see that the current order is neither natural nor permanent — and that futures start with the decisions made today.

One argument often expressed in libertarian foreign policy is the idea that had US sought to wind up rather than expand NATO when the Warsaw Pact fell, then the Ukraine War would’ve never happened. If we apply this same logic to 1990s East Asia, we can ask what would’ve happened if the United States wound down its Korea commitment when North Korea descended into famine?

The North Korean famine of the 1990s, commonly referred to as the “Arduous March,” emerged from a convergence of systemic collapse, natural disaster, and geopolitical shock. The disintegration of the Soviet Union deprived Pyongyang of subsidized fuel, fertilizer, and food imports that had sustained its centrally planned economy throughout the Cold War. Floods and droughts devastated agricultural production, while rigid state controls and chronic economic mismanagement prevented adaptation.

By the mid-to-late 1990s, large parts of the country faced severe food shortages, infrastructure breakdown, and social dislocation. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, ranging from several hundred thousand to over two million people. Reports from defectors and humanitarian organizations described widespread starvation, the collapse of the public distribution system, mass internal migration, and the emergence of informal black markets as ordinary citizens struggled to survive.

South Korea gradually emerged as one of Pyongyang’s most significant external sources of assistance. Initial aid was cautious and politically contentious, particularly under conservative governments wary of strengthening the North.

However, following the election of Kim Dae-jung in 1997 and the introduction of the “Sunshine Policy,” Seoul dramatically expanded humanitarian and economic engagement. South Korea provided large quantities of rice, fertilizer, medical supplies, and financial assistance, both directly and through international organizations such as the World Food Programme.

The aid was framed as humanitarian rather than political, though it also served a strategic purpose: stabilizing the peninsula and preventing state collapse, mass refugee flows, or military instability on South Korea’s border. This period also saw the beginnings of inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, including tourism initiatives and the foundations for the later Kaesong Industrial Complex.

So what would’ve happened if the U.S. had all but withdrawn its military from South Korea during this period? What would’ve happened had USFK left? Four scenarios suggest themselves.

In the first, American withdrawal reduces North Korea’s insecurity. Without U.S. forces stationed in the South, Pyongyang no longer faces the same immediate threat of American forces on its doorstep. With South Korean political priorities focused on inter-Korean stabilization and a relatively weakened and less threatening North Korea, there is no surge in South Korea’s conventional military power. In this version, North Korea remains poor, politically coercive, and militarized, but it does not conclude that nuclear weapons are essential to survival. The peninsula remains divided but less tense, reconciliation and cooperation talks continue, and the nuclear crisis either never emerges or remains far more limited.

In the second scenario, American withdrawal from Korea changes less than expected. Even without U.S. troops south of the DMZ, Pyongyang still watches the broader global order and draws dark conclusions. The 2003 invasion of Iraq becomes the decisive lesson: weak states without nuclear weapons can be destroyed; hostile regimes that lack a deterrent can be overthrown. South Korea’s conventional forces remain integrated in a wider U.S. framework with bases still in nearby Japan. South Korea’s participation in the Iraq conflict and its reconstruction demonstrates increasing capacity.

In this world, North Korea’s nuclear program still advances, not because of the local balance on the peninsula alone, but because of the wider logic of U.S. power. The lesson is no longer “American troops threaten us from South Korea,” but “American power threatens regimes like ours wherever they are.” Nuclear weapons remain the ultimate insurance policy.

The third scenario is the most transformative. With the U.S. military presence reduced, the Sunshine Policy becomes not merely a gesture of engagement, but the central organizing framework for the peninsula. Seoul has greater room to maneuver, Pyongyang has fewer reasons to treat every South Korean initiative as an extension of American strategy.

Inter-Korean cooperation expands far beyond food aid, tourism, and industrial projects. Humanitarian assistance becomes infrastructure assistance; infrastructure assistance becomes economic integration; economic integration opens space for political dialogue. This does not mean reunification arrives quickly, or that North Korea liberalizes overnight. But it does suggest a peninsula where cooperation becomes more plausible because the sense of perceived threat has been lowered. In this version, the 1990s famine becomes not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but also the opening for a very different Korean order.

Lastly, the darkest scenario. Pyongyang interprets American withdrawal not as an opportunity for coexistence, but as a fleeting strategic opening. Facing economic collapse, famine, institutional decay, and the possible erosion of regime control, the North Korean leadership concludes that time is no longer on its side. Rather than slowly weakening while South Korea grows richer and more technologically advanced, it launches a massive ground invasion as a desperate final gamble for reunification on its own terms.

The logic is brutal but historically recognizable: collapsing states sometimes become more aggressive, not less. The leadership may calculate that South Korea, deprived of direct American military backing and psychologically shocked by U.S. retrenchment, would lack the confidence or cohesion to withstand a rapid assault. In this scenario, the late 1990s become not the era of the Sunshine Policy, but the moment the Korean Peninsula plunges back into catastrophic war — not because North Korea was strong, but because it feared irreversible decline.

Now the first is a pretty nice feelgood scenario, and the last, if we add a hapless Casio watch salesman who invents a time machine, a pretty dark alt-history movie hopeful. What would really have happened? See that’s not the point. The point is to open our minds to the idea that futures start with the decisions made today. With every small decision we make today, alternative futures open up.

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